Then suddenly, mournfully, without raising his eyes from the table, he began to sing. Still seated, looking at no one else, he sang of love and loss and broken hearts, his voice rich, deep, and beautifully modulated. Every customer in the cafe listened with rapt attention. More pesos, another song. The sad-faced man in a guayabera shirt, eyes almost shut now, sang and sang, the crowd cheering wildly after each song ended. He seemed oblivious to their roars of approval, focused through slit eyes on some point far away or deep inside his battered skull his voice carrying over the now-empty mercado mercado and into the night. and into the night.
I ate well in Oaxaca. I had chocolate atole atole, a thick hot chocolate beverage with the texture of Cream of Wheat, made from local chocolate, cinnamon, and cornmeal. I tried an ice cream made with leche quemada leche quemada (burned milk), which is surprisingly delicious. I sampled the mysteries of the seven (burned milk), which is surprisingly delicious. I sampled the mysteries of the seven moles moles, watched queso fresco queso fres...o...b..ing made a fresh farmer cheese saw how one batch can be taken along to make a drier, aged variety, and a soft-curd version. At the being made a fresh farmer cheese saw how one batch can be taken along to make a drier, aged variety, and a soft-curd version. At the mercado mercado, I bought morcilla morcilla and chorizo sausages from one of the butchers, had them grilled with the garnishes and tortillas available from the many "make your own" taco stands. I had a marvelous and chorizo sausages from one of the butchers, had them grilled with the garnishes and tortillas available from the many "make your own" taco stands. I had a marvelous menudo menudo, a spicy tripe and offal soup/stew, returning later to try pozole pozole, a similar dish with chick peas. Outside the mercado mercado, I found a busy taco stand, packed with Oaxaquenos sitting on benches. A cook and an a.s.sistant were hard at work hacking up a freshly cooked pig"s head, rolling up still-warm portions of tender pork in corn tortillas, then drizzling them with salsa verde salsa verde.
I squeezed in between some locals and ordered a few. Best tacos ever. I could have sat there forever under a naked lightbulb, surrounded by enthusiastically eating Mexicans and their children. But there were people waiting for a spot. I returned the next night, and the next.
Off a dirt road in the farmland around Oaxaca de Juarez, the state"s capital, Dominga made me tamales. She cooked in a small outdoor kitchen: a charcoal fire, clay saucepan, steamer, a comal comal for toasting, a mortar and pestle, and a stone rolling pin. Chickens and roosters wandered around the dusty back lot and small garden, near the pigpens. for toasting, a mortar and pestle, and a stone rolling pin. Chickens and roosters wandered around the dusty back lot and small garden, near the pigpens.
We were going to the molino molino, the community mill, where for centuries Mexicans have gone, often every day, to grind their dried corn for masa masa, their dried chilis for mole mole, and their chocolate and their coffee beans on stone wheels. Dominga was a short, wide woman with mestizo features and strong arms and hands, which had seen a lot of work over the years. The corn soaking in a plastic bucket in one hand, a tub of chilis and garlic in another, she walked the few blocks in the hot sun to a small shed with a tin roof, where a line of women in similar frilled dresses and ap.r.o.ns waited for one of the two generator-powered machines to become available. Inside, the molina molina"s owner carefully fed handfuls of chilis into one machine and corn into the other, a rich, smooth paste issuing from both. Mole Mole, masa masa, atole atole, cafe cafe made fresh every day by mom. made fresh every day by mom.
You may think you"ve tried Mexican food. Unless you"ve been to Mexico and eaten in a home, you haven"t. Mexican food is not that sour two-day-old sludge foaming and fermenting in the center of your table next to a few stale corn chips, a little limp cilantro turning to slime among the long-gone onions. It is not graying or packaged guacamole, whipped in the food processor until it achieves the consistency of baby food. It is not heaped with cheddar and Monterey Jack cheese (you won"t see any of that in Mexico) and served with allegedly refried beans. In Mexico, everything is fresh. Dominga owns no Cuisinart. She doesn"t have a freezer. Her salsas do not arrive in jars, and her recipes are not faxed from Central, portion-controlled for multiunit use. Mexican food is not particularly hot and spicy. It is not soggy, frozen chimichangas, already haemorrhaging ingredients into the deep-fat fryer. It is not the dull, monochromatic slop you see all over America and Australia and the UK.
Dominga made me Oaxacan-style chicken tamales instead of wrapping the chicken and masa masa and sauce in a corn husk, as is usually done all over Mexico, she wrapped them in banana leaves. When she returned from the mill, Dominga removed a simmering freshly killed chicken from a pot and pulled the meat off in shreds. ( and sauce in a corn husk, as is usually done all over Mexico, she wrapped them in banana leaves. When she returned from the mill, Dominga removed a simmering freshly killed chicken from a pot and pulled the meat off in shreds. (Pollo pelado.) She mixed and kneaded her fresh masa masa with some rendered pork fat (packets of which are an essential ingredient around here), lightly toasted the banana leaves on the with some rendered pork fat (packets of which are an essential ingredient around here), lightly toasted the banana leaves on the comal comal, and stirred her intoxicating-smelling mole negro mole negro, which had been simmering for hours and hours.
Proximity to livestock and animal feces, I have found in my travels, is not necessarily an indicator of a bad meal. More often than not, in recent experience, it"s an early indicator of something good on the way. Why is that? It might have to do with the freshness question. Still living close to the source of your food, you often don"t have a refrigerator or freezer. Equipment and conditions are primitive. You can"t be lazy because no option other than the old way exists. Where there are freezers and refrigerators, laziness follows, the compromises and slow encroachment of convenience. Why spend all day making mole mole when you can make a jumbo batch and freeze it? Why make salsa every day when it lasts OK in the fridge? Try a salsa or a sauce hand-ground with a stone mortar and pestle and you"ll see what I mean. when you can make a jumbo batch and freeze it? Why make salsa every day when it lasts OK in the fridge? Try a salsa or a sauce hand-ground with a stone mortar and pestle and you"ll see what I mean.
Dominga"s tamales were marvelous. I ate them hot out of the steamer under a small palapa palapa, among the flies and the chickens and the pigs and it was d.a.m.n near a religious experience.
Martin, Eddie, and I stopped at a pulqueria pulqueria outside of town. It was a sky-blue hovel with a distorting jukebox and a lone addled drinker. The outside of town. It was a sky-blue hovel with a distorting jukebox and a lone addled drinker. The pulque pulque the fermented sap of the maguey cactus sat in fifty-five-gallon vats behind the bar, smelling sweet-sour. The bartender ladled the thick, viscous, milky-looking sap into two plastic beach pails the kind kids make sand castles with. We sat down at a weatherbeaten picnic table and poured ourselves drinks in tall, not particularly clean gla.s.ses. "Ewww!" said one of the TV crew, watching Martin enthusiastically insert and withdraw a finger into the the fermented sap of the maguey cactus sat in fifty-five-gallon vats behind the bar, smelling sweet-sour. The bartender ladled the thick, viscous, milky-looking sap into two plastic beach pails the kind kids make sand castles with. We sat down at a weatherbeaten picnic table and poured ourselves drinks in tall, not particularly clean gla.s.ses. "Ewww!" said one of the TV crew, watching Martin enthusiastically insert and withdraw a finger into the pulque pulque to check consistency, a long mucuslike strand coming along for the ride. The finger test wasn"t doing much for my stomach"s sense of well-being, either. I"d dined earlier on generous portions of fried worms and sauteed ant eggs a specialty of the area. The worms had been OK buried in enough guacamole and to check consistency, a long mucuslike strand coming along for the ride. The finger test wasn"t doing much for my stomach"s sense of well-being, either. I"d dined earlier on generous portions of fried worms and sauteed ant eggs a specialty of the area. The worms had been OK buried in enough guacamole and salsa roja salsa roja, and the ant eggs had been . . . well, OK, nutty-tasting, with a mealy feel and a lingering woody aftertaste. But the order of chiles en nogada chiles en nogada, the national dish of Mexico stuffed poblano poblano peppers, loaded with ground beef, walnuts, dried fruit, and cinnamon, served with two sauces (the colors of the nation"s flag) had been terrible beyond words. I don"t like beef with cinnamon, particularly accompanied by a sauce. Sitting in the peppers, loaded with ground beef, walnuts, dried fruit, and cinnamon, served with two sauces (the colors of the nation"s flag) had been terrible beyond words. I don"t like beef with cinnamon, particularly accompanied by a sauce. Sitting in the pulqueria pulqueria, swilling bucket after bucket of the mildly hallucinogenic low-rent beverage of choice for Mexicans in need of an affordable buzz, I was all too aware that underneath the roiling h.e.l.lbroth of pulque pulque even now beginning to bubble in my belly was a less-than-solid foundation of ant eggs, worms, and that horrible even now beginning to bubble in my belly was a less-than-solid foundation of ant eggs, worms, and that horrible chiles en nogada chiles en nogada. The ride back to my room in Izucar de Matamoros was agony.
Eddie"s house in Tlapa.n.a.la was a neat, clean one-story building two bedrooms, living room/dining area, large kitchen with a nice backyard and an outer kitchen and shed. When I arrived, Eddie"s wife, mother, children, and baby-sitter were sitting on a couch and in chairs, watching satellite television. In the kitchen, a table was covered with the makings of mole poblano mole poblano: poblano poblano peppers, plantains, chocolate, nuts, herbs. In the outside kitchen, the mother of my peppers, plantains, chocolate, nuts, herbs. In the outside kitchen, the mother of my tournant tournant, Antonio, was making tortillas, while next door, the mother of my former salad man, Gilberto, looked on. I knew I was in trouble when I stepped into Eddie"s well-tended backyard and saw a twenty-four-pound turkey still strutting around energetically. Eddie smiled and informed me that, as guest of honor, it was up to me.
"Matelo!" he said, handing me a machete. I"d never whacked an animal before. I was decidedly squeamish at the prospect. But the pressure was on. I was, after all, Eddie"s boss. If I looked like a punk, he"d look like a punk for working for me. I was well aware that any one of the women and probably most of the kids could easily step in and take out that turkey like they were brushing their teeth. I eyed him carefully. He was huge and lively. Brandishing the machete, I stepped forward and, with Eddie"s help, managed to restrain him. Eddie tilted the turkey"s head back and poured a shot of mezcal mezcal down his throat. His wife dragged the turkey over to a bench, gave his neck a turn so he was pinioned flat to the board, and let me take over. down his throat. His wife dragged the turkey over to a bench, gave his neck a turn so he was pinioned flat to the board, and let me take over.
Now, I knew that turkeys are stupid. I knew that when you chop the head off a chicken, for instance, it takes some time for it to die, that it flaps around the yard for a while, too dumb to know it"s dead. The phrase "running around like a headless chicken" comes to mind. And I knew that I should expect the turkey to be no smarter than a chicken. Turkeys drown, sometimes, looking straight up into the rain, forgetting to close their mouths (kind of like Bon Jovi fans). I knew all this. I intended as the gentle and sensitive soul I am to dispatch this particular bird to turkey heaven as cleanly, quickly, and painlessly as possible. I would not waver, hesitate, or falter. I raised the machete over the struggling bird"s neck, absolutely resolved to whack clean through, to end his life with one firm stroke. I came down with a resounding chop, the blade going Thunk! Thunk! into the wood. into the wood.
The turkey"s body went insane, flapping and flailing and bouncing around! Oh my G.o.d! I thought, I"ve missed! I"ve botched it! Convinced that I"d somehow missed a major artery, cruelly and ineptly only wounding the animal, I began swinging the blade again and again in a terrified frenzy, like a novice serial killer, hacking blindly at a tiny strip of connecting skin that still held head and body together. A gout of blood erupted onto Matthew"s lens a shot, by the way, that he missed. Spray decorated me from forehead to sandals. I looked down and saw that the contorting head was in my hand, but the body, still flapping wildly, had been taken by Eddie, who nonchalantly hung it from the shed ceiling to be plucked. I was now a killer. I sat next to my victim for a long time before pitching in and yanking feathers from the still-warm body, wondering what the h.e.l.l had happened to me.
It was a long, sleepy afternoon while the food cooked. Relatives showed up for the meal; a table was set up in the backyard. We eventually sat down to a very fine mole poblano de qua jobte mole poblano de qua jobte, accompanied by enchiladas, salsas, salads, and beer. I looked around at the faces at the table and saw the faces of my cooks back in New York.
"Welcome to my little rancho," said Eddie.
He"d arranged for a Mexican Woodstock at his little ranch in the foothills outside Izucar. It looked like it would be the biggest thing the town had seen since they"d risen up and slaughtered the French the Triumphant Return of Eddie Perez. He"d hired mariachis, a pop band, a singing vaquero with dancing palomino, a lariat act. A soundstage was in the finishing stages of construction in the dusty, sun-washed lot behind a row of low structures. Chickens, roosters, cattle, pigs, donkeys, and goats roamed freely among the accordion cactus in the surrounding hills. He"d invited the whole town: the mayor, a representative of the local criminal fraternity, notables of every stripe. He"d hired the entire off-duty police force of the neighboring town to act as security, and an army of women had been pressed into service. Rancheros dug a pit for barbacoa barbacoa. Little boys in b.u.t.ton-down shirts and little girls in Communion dresses ran messages and shuttled cooking equipment to and fro. Cases and cases of beer, tequila, and mezcal mezcal had been laid on. Gallon upon gallon of fresh-fruit had been laid on. Gallon upon gallon of fresh-fruit ponche ponche was in the works. Long tables had been set and arranged under the thatched roof of a was in the works. Long tables had been set and arranged under the thatched roof of a palapa palapa. This was going to be some party.
Meanwhile, I was having my own Marlboro Man moment. It"s one thing to wear denim and cowboy boots in New York; it"s quite another to kick dust and dung off your Tony Lama boots, sit back in a shady corner against a plain adobe wall, tilt back your chair, and put your feet up on a post. A cowboy hat, in New York, is a fashion accessory never, ever to be worn unless you"re a Chippendale"s dancer. In Puebla, in the midday sun, however, it"s a necessity. I tipped the brim of my spanking new hat down over my eyes to provide shade for my already-roasted nose and felt pretty d.a.m.n cool. Sauntering into a spare outbuilding where some rancheros were already free-pouring tequila into dirty shot gla.s.ses, I brushed the dust off my hat and rasped, "Tequila . . . . . . por favor por favor."
Sitting with Eddie and Martin all of us in full ranchero dress with our hats and boots watching a woman with Antonio"s face making tortillas on a comal comal a few yards away, recognizing the features of people I worked with and had worked with in the faces of the women cooking rice in a clay pot over an open fire, the girls cleaning cactus for a few yards away, recognizing the features of people I worked with and had worked with in the faces of the women cooking rice in a clay pot over an open fire, the girls cleaning cactus for ensalada de nopalitos ensalada de nopalitos, the old heladero heladero hand-cranking fresh lime sorbet over ice in an old wooden churn, I had never felt so happy to be part of my strange dysfunctional family thousands of miles away, back in my kitchen in New York. hand-cranking fresh lime sorbet over ice in an old wooden churn, I had never felt so happy to be part of my strange dysfunctional family thousands of miles away, back in my kitchen in New York.
The big event began with the digging of a pit the size of a large grave.
A fire was built at the bottom and allowed to burn down to glowing coals. When it was ready, some rancheros lowered big pots of goats" head soup into the pit, the stripped skulls dropped into the liquid at the last second by their horns, a pile of avocado leaves arranged around them. Sheep"s stomachs, stuffed with blood, spices, and mint a sort of Mexican version of boudin noir boudin noir were carefully placed inside. Then five whole goats, cleaned and b.u.t.terflied, were stacked one on top of the other and covered with more avocado leaves. (The goats had been slaughtered earlier in the day. Their skins were even now stretched and drying on Eddie"s roof.) The pit was then covered with a woven straw mat, which had been soaked in water, and carefully shoveled over with dirt. The various components would cook like this for about three and a half hours. were carefully placed inside. Then five whole goats, cleaned and b.u.t.terflied, were stacked one on top of the other and covered with more avocado leaves. (The goats had been slaughtered earlier in the day. Their skins were even now stretched and drying on Eddie"s roof.) The pit was then covered with a woven straw mat, which had been soaked in water, and carefully shoveled over with dirt. The various components would cook like this for about three and a half hours.
All over the arid lot, the pace quickened. From a sleepy, sun-drenched s.p.a.ce, the ranch was quickly becoming a hive of activity. Everywhere, things were coming together, guests beginning to arrive. The mariachis began to play; pop singers drank beer and tuned their instruments; a kid I recognized as a former busboy in New York arrived with floral arrangements. Couples began to dance. Kids played tag. Men sat down at the long tables, women and children to the rear on folding chairs. Eddie, who never touches a drop back in New York, was already drunk doling out the already-lethal ponche ponche, he insisted on floating another inch of raw tequila on top. The rancheros, too, seemed well on their way, and the party had only just begun.
"Don"t worry about nutheeng," said Eddie, gesturing to the armed figures standing guard up on the surrounding hills. "Drink! Anything you want. Tequila, mezcal, mota mezcal, mota. You having a good time? Don"t worry. You go asleep? No problem. You sleep anywhere. On the ground. With the chickens. Anywhere. You safe. Policia right there. n.o.body bother you."
"Jesus, Eddie," I said, "you should be proud . . . I can"t believe you did all this, put all this together."
The goats" head soup was fabulous one of the best things I"d had anywhere. Platters of roughly hacked roasted goat arrived, surprisingly tender and absolutely delicious. The stuffed stomach was revelatory a wonderful spicy jumbo sausage of b.l.o.o.d.y, oniony goodness. I tried to eat everything, including the ensalada de nopalitos ensalada de nopalitos, salsas, grabbing for food with still-warm tortillas from the readily available stacks in napkin-covered baskets everywhere. I ate rice, more salads, enchiladas, tamales, an incredible quesadilla of fresh zucchini flowers and queso fresco queso fresco. And is there any music on earth more sentimental, more romantic, more evocative of place than Mexican mariachi? (OK, maybe samba gets the edge.) But that evening, as the sun set over Eddie"s hills, with the sounds of music and laughter and Mexican-inflected Spanish all around me, I had never heard anything so beautiful.
The vaquero performed lariat tricks. Another sang on horseback, his horse dancing under him, rearing, lying down, kneeling at his lightest touch. Under rented floodlights and a string of Christmas bulbs, the sun long gone, the mounted vaquero dismounted, held his microphone with an officious gravity, and, in the tone reserved for announcers at sporting events, bellowed, rolling his "r"s" at maximum volume and gesturing toward me, " Senor as y senores . . . . . . el hombre el hombre, el chefe norteamericano, el chefe de Nueva York muy famosooo el chefe norteamericano, el chefe de Nueva York muy famosooo! Anthony . . . BouRDAIN!"
Uh-oh.
The crowd cheered. The music stopped, the mariachis looking at me expectantly. I knew what was required as I sauntered over to the horse waiting for me in the center of a ring of light. There was some hooting and HeeYaaaing coming from Eddie, the camera crew, and a few other smart-a.s.ses in the audience. I put one boot in a stirrup and hoisted myself smoothly into the saddle. (A few weeks at summer camp and two riding lessons at the Claremont stables served me surprisingly well.) I was drunk, unsteady, but it was a magical horse under me. Trained to dance, he responded to my every touch, breaking into a slow canter at the slightest movement of boot, turning on command. I made a reasonably competent turn around the yard, doffing my hat to all a.s.sembled, stopped at the appropriate spot, and swung down from the saddle like a rodeo dude, feeling both utterly foolish and thoroughly delighted at the same time.
Eddie"s pal, whom he"d introduced as the head of the local Mafia, forcefully insisted the camera crew and I join him in a few rounds of what he called "cucarachas." It would be a friendly match USA versus Mexico. One at a time, the two cameramen and I, followed by the Mafia guy and his two a.s.sociates, were presented with a fifty-fifty mix of Kahlua and tequila ignited and still flaming. The idea, it was explained, was to stick a straw into the flaming elixir and drain it in one go, before the flames subsided. This was to continue until one team cried uncle or collapsed unconscious.
The USA team did well. To our credit, we acquitted ourselves with honor, each of us downing five of the devastating concoctions without igniting our hair or choking. The Mexicans, though, were right in there. Finally, through some thankful manifestation of international goodwill, it was wordlessly agreed that at the appearance of a sixth round, all the contestants from both teams would together stick in their straws and suck down a final round, saving face for everyone, as all of us, I think, were on wobbly knees by now.
Matthew made it out the gate of Eddie"s ranch on two feet with the rest of us, but by the time we were in the car at the end of the dirt drive, he had his head out the window, begging for us to pull over. Now, Matt had, over the last few months and continents, been less than sensitive to my own moments of gastric distress. He had never hesitated to get me to choke down some cinematic but nauseating gleet even when I was ill if he"d thought it would make riveting television. He"d never had a problem shooting me sick in bed, crying for relief, crawling toward yet another cold tile floor. So when we pulled over so poor Matt could flop senselessly about in front of the headlights, then crawl into a drainage ditch on his belly, I had his camera in my hands. This was my moment. Payback. Video gold. All I had to do was aim, press the b.u.t.ton, and then everyone back in the offices in New York editors, producers, all of us could play and replay the comeuppance of my longtime tormentor. The lighting was perfect. It couldn"t have been more dramatic: a deserted country road, total black beyond the narrow circ.u.mference of the headlights, a dark canefield in the background. I raised the camera, pointed . . .
I just couldn"t do it. I didn"t have the heart.
We ended up hoisting the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d back into the car, and carrying him to his room later. We took off his shoes. I left his camera and his exposed tape by his side.
When he woke, those would be the first things he"d be looking for.
He"s a professional, after all.
Can Charlie Surf?
I wake up in my room at the Bao Dai Villas, the onetime summer home of the last emperor of Vietnam. I hear reveille out the window, followed by patriotic music at a nearby school, and the sound of children a.s.sembling. Rain patters on leaves; roosters crow. Someone is chopping wood on the grounds and there"s the familiar shush of a straw whisk broom sweeping tile. Out on the water, just around the point, a freighter"s engines throb idly in the early-morning mist.
All my clothes are soggy and beset by mosquitoes. I remain under the netting over my bed until I can remember where I put the repellent. There"s a knock on the door. It"s Lydia, wondering if I have any Lomotil. I went alone to Nha Trang beach yesterday, ate whole sea bream with my fingers under a palm tree. Chris ate crab soup at the hotel. He"s deathly ill with food poisoning. Of course I have Lomotil. The traveling chef"s best friend. I give Lydia a few and wish Chris well. I know how he feels. It looks like I"m on my own this morning.
After locating the repellent, I spray down my clothes, find the driest ones I can, and get dressed. There"s a scooter and motorbike rental by the desk, and I pick out the one with the most juice, hop on, then head into town for breakfast. Technically, foreigners aren"t allowed to drive anything over a low-cc putt-putt, but the rental guy didn"t give me any trouble, so in a few minutes, I"ve joined the thick stream of morning cyclists heading in on Nha Trang"s main beachfront drag. It feels great. I"m surrounded on all sides by men and women in their conical hats, whipping by palm trees, a long stretch of white sand and gentle surf to my right, the beach mostly deserted. The Vietnamese are not really beachgoers. Pale skin is seen here as it is in Cambodia and elsewhere in the East as an indicator of high status and good family. A lot of money is spent on skin lighteners, acid peels, and various fraudulent and often-harmful procedures intended to make one whiter. Women in Saigon often cover themselves from head to toe to protect themselves from the sun"s rays. So Charlie, it appears, does not surf. Not in Nha Trang anyway.
As I turn off the main road, away from the sea, the traffic intensifies. Cars, trucks, more and more cyclists on motorcycles, bicycles, cyclos, and scooters join the fast-moving pack. Crossing an intersection is a heart-stopping maneuver, frightening and thrilling at the same time, filled with the roar of engines all accelerating simultaneously as we swarm across a square, only a foot or two from people on both sides. I squeeze past a line of trucks on the bridge across the channel. In the water, the gaudily painted red-white-and-blue fishing boats are coming in toward sh.o.r.e.
Local legend has it that when Nha Trang was the base for US military activity in the area, the CIA and Special Forces used to kick prisoners out of helicopters over this channel wire a few tire rims to their necks and out the door. Now, there"s little evidence of what was once an enormous American presence. As elsewhere in Vietnam, there"s plenty of infrastructure, which the Vietnamese have all too happily adapted to civilian use, but the obvious signs are gone. No more shantytowns built out of cans hammered flat and sc.r.a.ps of military detritus, housing wh.o.r.es and cleaning ladies and laundresses. Quonset huts, officers" clubs, barracks, and parade grounds are gone or converted to more practical purposes. The large hotels and villas once used to house high-ranking military personnel are now the property of government officials or rented out to tourists. The only people on Nha Trang beach are a few French, Germans, and Australians, most staying in the modern foreign-built resort-type buildings cl.u.s.tered together at one end of the bay. Yesterday on the beach, a kid approached me with a box of used books in English. It was the ubiquitous Vietnam collection: pirated editions of Tim Page, Michael Herr, David Halberstam, Philip Caputo, Neil Sheehan, and Graham Greene pretty much like the collection on my bookshelf at home. But among the crudely Xeroxed covers and the dog-eared copies of left-behind drugstore paperbacks, the kid extracted a novel by a Vietnamese author: Bao Ninh"s The Sorrow of War. The Sorrow of War.
"Not legal this book," said the kid, looking theatrically in both directions.
Needing a good beach read, I bought the book. The author, a war hero, served with the NVA"s Glorious Twenty-seventh Youth Brigade. Of five hundred officers and enlisted men who went into battle with him, only ten survived. It"s a remarkable doc.u.ment. Change the names and it"s an Oliver Stone movie. The members of the hero"s platoon have nicknames, just as in every American war movie you"ve ever seen. The conflicts described are b.l.o.o.d.y, pointless, and horrific. The soldiers are frightened and superst.i.tious. They get high on weed, on any psychoactive substance they can, whenever they can. Innocents are cruelly and foolishly killed. The "good guys" are responsible for brutal rapes and atrocities. The hero returns to Hanoi cynical, embittered, and hopelessly screwed up, only to find his girlfriend has become a prost.i.tute. He spends most of his time with other similarly screwed-up veterans all of whom spend most of their time drinking and getting into fights, having lost faith in everything they once believed in. It"s a remarkable book, mostly for its eerie parallels to similar American works. It"s a Vietnam book like so many Vietnam books only told from the other side.
By a Cham temple on a hilltop, I turn right down a narrow dirt road, splashing through muddy puddles until I find the fish market. People are eating everywhere. Among the pallets of fish and fast-moving deliveries and the crowds of marketers, large groups of people old, young, babies, and children sit on low plastic stools and squat, leaning against walls, slurping noodles from bowls, drinking tea, nibbling rice cakes, and eating pate between baguettes. There"s food cooking everywhere. Anywhere there"s room for a fire and a cooking pot, someone has food going. Little storefront coms coms sell sell pho pho and noodles and "roll your own beef." Street vendors sell spring rolls, shrimp on a stick, scary-looking pate sandwiches, baguettes, fried fish, fruit, sweets, and steamed crabs. Others seem to have just settled down at random, fired up some soup or noodles, and dug in along with a large group of friends and family. I"m taller, by at least a foot, than anyone for two miles. Walking through the fish market to the water"s edge, I get a lot of stares. A woman smiles and holds up her baby, a healthy-looking kid in a bright knit cap and new clothes. The woman herself is nearly in rags. "h.e.l.lo!" she says, holding the baby"s hand and showing him how to wave. "Bye-bye!" She asks me, by pointing and gesturing, if she can use my camera to take a picture of her son with me. Sure. Why not? She hastily confers with a group of women from a nearby fish stall. Someone locates a stool and the kid is posed standing on top. I show the woman how to operate the shutter and she frames the photo, a large group of women gathering behind and around her, all trying to look through the viewfinder, all beaming with pride that their best and brightest is having his picture taken next to the freakishly tall and strange-looking American. and noodles and "roll your own beef." Street vendors sell spring rolls, shrimp on a stick, scary-looking pate sandwiches, baguettes, fried fish, fruit, sweets, and steamed crabs. Others seem to have just settled down at random, fired up some soup or noodles, and dug in along with a large group of friends and family. I"m taller, by at least a foot, than anyone for two miles. Walking through the fish market to the water"s edge, I get a lot of stares. A woman smiles and holds up her baby, a healthy-looking kid in a bright knit cap and new clothes. The woman herself is nearly in rags. "h.e.l.lo!" she says, holding the baby"s hand and showing him how to wave. "Bye-bye!" She asks me, by pointing and gesturing, if she can use my camera to take a picture of her son with me. Sure. Why not? She hastily confers with a group of women from a nearby fish stall. Someone locates a stool and the kid is posed standing on top. I show the woman how to operate the shutter and she frames the photo, a large group of women gathering behind and around her, all trying to look through the viewfinder, all beaming with pride that their best and brightest is having his picture taken next to the freakishly tall and strange-looking American.
Only women work here. The fishmongers, scaling and gutting at long wooden tables by the water"s edge, are all women. The people mending nets, unloading their catch from the colorfully decorated boats (they look like Amish barns), and cooking food at the stalls are all women. Women in thung chais thung chais, perfectly round dinghies made of woven bamboo and pitch, paddle their wobbly vessels toward the docks a difficult balancing act (as I"d soon find out). Where are the men?
I sit down at a table with a large group of fishwives and their kids. The cook smiles and carefully places some cooked fish, some rice noodles, a few fish cakes, chilis, sprouts, peppers, and cilantro in a bowl, then hands me some chopsticks, a dish of black pepper, a wedge of lime, some additional chilis, and nuoc mam nuoc mam and chili sauce. There"s a pot of coffee brewing over coals, and she pours me a cup. As with almost everything I"ve tried in Vietnam, it"s fresh-tasting, vibrant, and delicious. Women keep coming over to the table and introducing their children. What they want, I have no idea. They ask for nothing except to allow their babies and small children to touch my arm, shake my hand, wave, the kids gaping wide-eyed and confused as the women scream with laughter and obvious delight. All these women have been up since way before dawn, many of them out on the water for hours, hauling in fish, loading them into their little round basket boats, unloading on sh.o.r.e. Yet no one looks tired. No one looks beaten down or defeated by their work. New arrivals stand upright in their dangerously pitching basket boats, smiling broadly as they heave pound after pound of dripping fish onto the market floor. The cook asks me if I"d like more coffee and pours me another cup, making sure my can of condensed milk is not empty. Fish blood runs across the wet concrete floor; a basket of squid is dropped a few feet away, then another basket of fish. The channel is filled with incoming fishing vessels, the awkwardly bobbing and chili sauce. There"s a pot of coffee brewing over coals, and she pours me a cup. As with almost everything I"ve tried in Vietnam, it"s fresh-tasting, vibrant, and delicious. Women keep coming over to the table and introducing their children. What they want, I have no idea. They ask for nothing except to allow their babies and small children to touch my arm, shake my hand, wave, the kids gaping wide-eyed and confused as the women scream with laughter and obvious delight. All these women have been up since way before dawn, many of them out on the water for hours, hauling in fish, loading them into their little round basket boats, unloading on sh.o.r.e. Yet no one looks tired. No one looks beaten down or defeated by their work. New arrivals stand upright in their dangerously pitching basket boats, smiling broadly as they heave pound after pound of dripping fish onto the market floor. The cook asks me if I"d like more coffee and pours me another cup, making sure my can of condensed milk is not empty. Fish blood runs across the wet concrete floor; a basket of squid is dropped a few feet away, then another basket of fish. The channel is filled with incoming fishing vessels, the awkwardly bobbing thung chais thung chais. Clouds cling to the mountains surrounding Nha Trang like tufts of white hair. I love it here.
Offsh.o.r.e are the islands of Hon Tre, Hon Tam, and Hon Mieu. Beyond those, farther out to sea, are a few tall rocks, surrounded by rough, dangerous surf, constantly patrolled by gunboats. This is where the salanganes (a variety of swallow) build their nests, high on the perilous snake-infested cliffs. The nests, formed out of the hardened salivary secretions of the swallow, fetch up to four thousand dollars a kilo from Chinese "medical" pract.i.tioners and are much sought after throughout the East for bird"s nest soup. Chris and Lydia have already asked if I"d be willing to climb up a cliff, past poisonous snakes, and crawl hundreds of feet over jagged rocks and pounding surf so they can shoot a bird"s nest soup scene. I pointed out that bird"s nest soup is medicine not really food and that I have about as much interest in bird"s nest soup as I do in the next Steven Seagal ecothriller. The gunboat thing finally dissuaded them from having me attempt rappelling from any cliffs, but I feared the issue was not yet dead. I did, however, want to see some islands. Linh and his friend Dongh, our driver in Nha Trang, said they knew a place on Hon Mieu, a little fishing village called Ba Mieu, where the seafood is supposed to be spectacular. I put a lot of faith in Dongh"s opinions on food. He is a foodie, and as soon as he"d met me, he"d announced that I was a lucky man, for I was in the best town in the country for food. When we"d eaten dinner the first night, he"d kept pointing out highlights of the meal, asking if I"d noticed the amount of roe practically bursting from the green crabs, the freshness and flavor of the local lobsters, the clear eyes and n.o.ble conformation of the whole fish. He"d already fed me really well at a fish joint by the beach, and when Chris had asked about the food at our hotel, he"d rolled his eyes at the ceiling and given a decidedly lukewarm response.
Chris, it appeared, would have been well advised to pay closer attention. I"m surprised Linh is willing to take me here, that he is allowing us to see this and film it.
As our hired boat approaches the surf off the island of Hon Lon, Dongh calls out to two thin, shabbily dressed men on the beach. A long, narrow launch sets out from sh.o.r.e, straight into the breakers, and eventually pulls alongside. There"s room for only two pa.s.sengers at a time in the leaky, water-filled launch. Lydia and I clamber in and are ferried to sh.o.r.e, riding the waves the last few yards. Chris is still back at the Bao Dai, probably getting up close and personal with the plumbing. This is a Vietnam I haven"t seen yet.
It"s a hard-packed, finely grained white sand beach around a small cove, strewn with trash, flotsam and jetsam, an absolutely G.o.dforsaken strip. A small village lies back among the trees on the muddy banks of what looks like a drainage ditch. Huts, hooches, shacks as soggy and fragile-looking as you could possibly imagine sag into unhealthy-looking brown water. There is no sign of electrical power, telephone communication, television, or any modern development dating after the mid-seventeenth century. There are a few bundles of sticks, and a thung chai thung chai resting upside down on the sand. I see no signs of life. resting upside down on the sand. I see no signs of life.
Lydia and I are alone on the beach, and I"m thinking about a swim. The surf is high, with a nice shape, the waves breaking far enough out to get a good ride if I want to bodysurf. Suddenly, we"re under attack. Women come running from their huts, holding baskets of cheap seash.e.l.l jewelry (the same Macao-made stuff you see on every beach in the world). The women are screaming, desperate-sounding, waving babies in front of them, shrieking, "Look! Look! Baby! Baby!" They surround us on all sides, pressing in close, aggressively shaking fistfuls of necklaces and bracelets in front of us. It"s impossible to deter them. I shake my head, saying, "No, no . . . thank you . . . no . . ." again and again, but it"s no use. They"re pushing in, tugging our clothes. I move away, but they follow wherever I go. Lydia looks nervously at the boat, Linh and Dongh still waiting for the launch to return. I make the mistake of buying two pieces, hoping that"ll satisfy the women, but it only makes them more desperate and inflamed. They begin arguing with one another, screaming, shouting, waving their fists. A woman presents me with her baby, a beautiful child with a single gold earring with a tiny gold bell probably more valuable than the entire village and begs me to buy a flimsy string of sh.e.l.ls. I give in, which causes the others to redouble their frenzied efforts.
"I have a plan," I say to Lydia. I run down to the water"s edge, peel off my clothes, and dive in, then swim as far out as I can. Lydia chooses to remain ash.o.r.e.
Nice curl on the waves. No reason at all for Charlie not to surf. I"m sure he must somewhere. Some American soldier must have left an old longboard behind. There must be a Vietnamese surfer somewhere. Next time, I"ll check Da Nang. I stay in the water for a long time, finally coming back ash.o.r.e, to find Linh, stripped to his undershorts, energetically jogging down the beach, doing calisthenics, looking as happy as I"ve seen him. He smiles at me and charges into the surf. The women have given up on us. Now they just sit and watch, without much interest.
Progress has certainly pa.s.sed this village by. I can"t imagine what must happen during the rainy season, when it can pour for weeks and weeks without pause. That ditch must become a torrent. The houses already tilting on broken stilts and crumbling into the water must flood. The roofs and walls, such as they are, can in no way keep out the rain. I see no animals, no crops or gardens. Other than the lone thung chai thung chai, there are no boats. I ask Linh later, "Who are these people? How do they live?"
"Very poor people," he says. "Fishermen families."
When we"ve finished up, it"s back to the leaky launch. The trip to the boat is pretty dicey: straight into the surf, water up to our shins, waves crashing over the bow. There are open s.p.a.ces between the planks, and I can"t see how we"re staying afloat. Aft, one man furiously yanks a single oar back and forth, propelling us into the waves.
Hon Mieu, only a few miles away, is a completely different story. I can see another village of low ramshackle structures on the sh.o.r.e, but the bay is filled with tourist boats and water taxis, fishing vessels and thung chais thung chais, women shuttling visitors to sh.o.r.e. As we draw closer and tie up alongside another large water taxi, I can make out a strip of waterfront restaurants. Crowds of Vietnamese tourists fill long tables on their raised decks.
"This way," says Dongh. Linh, Lydia and I follow, climbing from boat to boat across the bay until we come to a series of large floating docks, a maze of pitching, rocking walkways built around square openings that have been sealed underneath with fishing net. A whole enterprise floating a mile out to sea. Boats are tied up, fishmongers argue over prices, and customers cl.u.s.ter around large underwater pens containing the most astonishing array of live seafood. I stand there in bare feet, trying to keep my balance with the rise and fall of the planks beneath me, looking at enormous squid and cuttlefish, a pen filled with thrashing tuna, grouperlike fish, sea bream, and fish I"ve never seen before. Giant prawns, huge blue-and-yellow spiny lobsters, and crabs scuttle about just below the surface, awaiting my selection. I kneel down, reach underwater, and pull out a three- or four-pound lobster. Linh picks out some squid and some tuna while Dongh makes arrangements for our transport to sh.o.r.e. Lydia and I walk out to the end of a swaying collection of planks and climb very carefully into a thung chai thung chai; the two women in charge show us just where to sit, indicating that we should balance on the narrow lip, to best distribute our weight. Linh and Dongh take another boat in.
It seems like the most poorly designed vessel ever dreamed of. Absolutely spherical, like big Ping-Pong b.a.l.l.s sawed in half and thrown into water, the boats bob and pitch with every move inside or out, threatening to toss one into the sea at any moment. One woman paddles, leaning ahead over the side, while another, directly opposite her on the other side of the boat"s circ.u.mference, paddles in the opposite direction. Back and forth, back and forth, in a zigzag pattern to sh.o.r.e. I take an immediate liking to my skippers, two ruddy-looking ladies in the standard conical hats, which are tied tightly by sashes under their chins. They chatter cheerfully all the way in. As we disembark, carefully, very carefully, standing up and stepping onto a slippery dock, everyone remaining in the boat has to move around quickly to compensate for the changing distribution of weight.
In one of those magic moments that makes you want to hug the whole world, when Dongh (landlubber from town) and Linh (Hanoi city boy in nice white shirt) try to leave their little round basket boat, Dongh loses his footing and pitches face-forward onto the dock, nearly capsizing the boat and just escaping a good knock on the head. All the women burst out laughing. From other boats nearby, people hoot and tease, really enjoying Dongh"s embarra.s.sment. It goes on for a long time, all of us laughing hysterically. Every time any of us catch another"s eye, it starts again. One of those rare crosscultural moments where one realizes we"re not that different after all.
Right next to the dock, up a few slimy wooden steps, a cook from the Hai Dao restaurant gravely examines the sea creatures we"ve brought and then weighs them on a scale. One pays for one"s dinner by weight. Seated at a large uncovered table, Dongh, Linh, and I are soon joined by the pilot of our water taxi. At Linh"s urging, we order a bottle of Nep Moi, Hanoi vodka. A waiter approaches with my lobster, still kicking, holds it over a gla.s.s, and thrusts a short knife into its s.e.xual organs. A transluscent, slightly milky white liquid pours out and is quickly mixed with the vodka.
"Ruou tiet tom hum . . . lobster blood," Linh volunteers. "Makes you strong." . . . lobster blood," Linh volunteers. "Makes you strong."
The Hai Dao is packed with customers, every table filled with enthusiastic Vietnamese families chowing down, some visiting from America, some vacationing from Hanoi and Saigon. Everywhere, there is the sound of those plastic packages of cold towels popping, the floor littered with discarded lobster sh.e.l.ls, cracked crab claws, fish bones, cigarette b.u.t.ts, rolling beer bottles.
Food starts to arrive at our tables: tom hum nuong tom hum nuong, my lobster, grilled over a wood fire; muc huap muc huap, steamed squid with ginger and scallions; ca thu xot ca chau ca thu xot ca chau, tuna braised in tomato and cilantro; banh da vung banh da vung, rice cakes studded with sesame seeds, in a bundt mold-shaped hot pot over a little gas burner at the center of the table; mi canh ca mi canh ca, a sweet-and-sour soup of fish, noodles, tomato, onion, cilantro, pineapple, and scallion, and a few humongous green crabs, overstuffed with roe. It is the perfect setting for a d.a.m.n near perfect meal. I am now totally indoctrinated to the casual Vietnamese dining experience. I love the way you garnish and season your own food: the ground black pepper and lime wedges you mix together into a paste and dip your food into, the dipping sauces and fish sauce with chili paste, the little plates of tiny green and red peppers, the bottles of soy, the plates of chopped cilantro and scallions.
Dongh has made it his personal mission to make sure I fully enjoy every sc.r.a.p of Nha Trang"s bounty. He refuses to let me touch the lobster or the crab until he"s tunneled through every claw and spindly leg and removed every micron of meat. When he lifts off the carapace of a jumbo-sized green crab, he beams at me as he points out the beautiful, fantastically plump roe, the crab backs swimming with delicious fat.
We eat with chopsticks. We eat with our hands. We smoke between courses. We smoke during courses. We drink vodka and beer, scattering our refuse all over the table, like everyone else. The food is wonderful. Nothing but happy faces as far as I can see, children and grandfathers avidly sucking the last bits of meat out of crab legs and lobsters, picking out the good stuff from between fish bones.
I am ecstatically happy. I love it here. I love this country. I consider, for the fifth or sixth time at least, defecting.
What else do I need? Great food. The South China Sea"s beautiful beaches. An exotic locale. An element of adventure. People so proud, so nice, and so generous that I have to keep a cover story on tap, should a cabdriver or shopkeeper invite me to his home for dinner (bankrupting himself in the process). It"s a wonderland of food and cooking. Everybody has an opinion. Linh, naturally, says the best food in Vietnam is in Hanoi. Dongh sneers dismissively and argues for Nha Trang. They have definite opinions in Can Tho. And Saigon speaks for itself. To the Saigonese, North Vietnam is a joke unfriendly, uninteresting, filled with stuck-up idealogues who underseason their food. Anyplace where everybody feels so strongly about their particular community, their cuisine, and their cooks, you know you"re going to eat well. I could live here. And it smells good. I"ve already come to like the odor of durian and fermenting fish sauce, promising, as they do, untold delights, constant reminders that yes, yes, I"m in Vietnam! I"m really in Vietnam!
But TV makes its own rules. When I get back to the Bao Dai Villas, still reeling from the feast, they"re preparing something for me in the kitchen. Chris is still out of the game for a while. (In coming weeks, he became thin and pale, unable to eat, constantly feeling ill.) But Lydia has arranged for a meal of the dreaded bird"s nest soup.
"You"ve been dreaming of bird"s nest soup," she begins.
"No, I haven"t," I say, interrupting her. "I don"t give a f.u.c.k about bird"s nest soup. I thought this was settled . . . I"m absolutely stuffed. I"m feeling a little seasick from the trip back. Please don"t ask me to choke down bird"s nest soup. I just had one of the great meals of my life. Don"t ruin it. Please."
But Lydia"s like a dog with a bone between its teeth when she gets a concept in mind. She"s shot a lot of odd bits of film, close-ups, kaleidoscopic scenes on "progressive scan," which she"s convinced, after some additional Apocalypse Now Apocalypse Now-type footage of me lying in bed, shot from behind a slowly revolving ceiling fan, will make hilarious viewing.
"You"ve been dreaming about bird"s nest soup," she begins again, undeterred. "It"s the dream sequence."
Far be it from me to stand in the way of art. I like Lydia. At the end of the day, I always end up doing pretty much whatever she asks. Looks like I"m eating bird"s nest soup. And not just any bird"s nest soup. Bird"s nest soup from the same kitchen that put Chris on his back for the last twenty-four hours.
What the h.e.l.l is in bird"s nest soup? Bird"s nest, for one. After cooking, it has the flavor, consistency, and appearance of overcooked angel-hair pasta or cellophane noodles, slightly transluscent and, overall, pretty inoffensive. The chunks are the problem. Bird"s nest soup is made by hacking up a whole rock dove (pigeon), putting the meat, bones and all, into a drained coconut, and then cooking it with the soaked nest, an a.s.sortment of Chinese medicinal herbs, dates, scallions, ginger, and the swallow"s eggs. The coconut milk is poured back in and the whole thing is steamed for four hours.
It"s disgusting. The nest tastes fine. The broth has a sweet-and-sour taste that"s not too bad. But I just am not ready for the chunks. Not after my enormous seafood lunch on the island. Not ever. I struggle with chopsticks to pick my way through all the hard-cooked eggs, slurp strands of nest dutifully, if unenthusiastically, managing to gnaw the meat off a few stringy bits of thigh and breast. But when the pigeon"s head, beak, eyes, and all, comes popping up between the eggs and dates and bones and the rubbery sheets of coconut meat peeling off the sh.e.l.l, I have had enough. Linh and Dongh are digging into theirs as if they, too, have not just wiped out a monster-sized seafood feast. I eat as much as I can and hurry back to my room to lie under the mosquito netting and groan and toss, feeling like I"m going to die.
Two hours ago, I was dancing on the moon. Now? The horror. The horror.
West Coast
San Francisco, as its residents like to remind you, is nothing like Los Angeles. Anytime a snide, wise-a.s.s New Yorker like myself starts slagging California, someone points out that "San Francisco is different." It"s pretty. There are hills. Unlike LA, you can, on occasion, actually hail a cab by sticking a hand out in the street. Other than New York, it"s probably got more talented chefs, and a more vibrant culinary scene, than any other American city. A good argument could be made that the whole renaissance in American restaurant cooking emanated outward from San Francisco, starting with Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower. It"s got a shabby, bohemian appeal, a rich tradition of bad behavior, good local ingredients. "You"ll love it," my friends always told me.
So how come I can"t f.u.c.king smoke? Somewhere north of San Francisco, I was sitting at the bar of a ramshackle roadhouse that, from all appearances, was exactly the sort of place I like. The bartender, "Lucky," or something like that, is in her fifties. She has a hoa.r.s.e, rasping voice, two missing teeth, and a tattoo of a winged phallus above her wrinkled left breast. Charlie Daniels plays on the jukebox for a small group of regulars drinking bourbon and rye with beer chasers at ten o"clock in the morning. A chopped Harley sits out front and probably belongs to the guy in the cut-down denim jacket to my left, who offered to sell me crack a few moments ago when we pa.s.sed each other in the septic bathroom and I get the general impression that if I were to slide over to the left or the right, buy a few rounds for my fellow citizens, I could probably acquire an illegal handgun or two. This was the sort of place where I could walk over to the jukebox and play a couple of Johnny Cash tunes and n.o.body would say boo. h.e.l.l, they might even like it. This was the sort of place that when Johnny, singing "Folsom Prison Blues," comes to the line, "I shot a man in Reno . . . just to watch him die," people will sing along, getting wistful over similar golden moments in their own pasts.
On my second pint, I was getting into the ambience: the familiar smell of decades of spilled beer, a hint of Lysol, chicken wings in the deep fryer. Somebody down at the other end was drunkenly insisting, "I barely touched the b.i.t.c.h! It was a f.u.c.kin" accident! Why she"s gotta go and get a G.o.dd.a.m.n restraining order!" before bursting into tears. I took another sip of beer, reached automatically into my shirt pocket, and fired up a cigarette. Lucky the bartender looked at me as if I"d just taken my pants off and begun soaking myself down with gasoline.
"Dude!" she wheezed, nervous, her eyes darting in all directions at once. "You can"t do that here! You gotta take that outside!"
You can"t smoke anywhere in California. Rob Reiner says so. Celebrity f.u.c.kheads who live in walled compounds and use words like working cla.s.s working cla.s.s never having sat down at a bar for an early-afternoon shot and a beer with any such animal in their lives say so. For them, the bar is a place where we stupid, lumpen, and oppressed blue-collar proles are victimized by evil tobacco companies that have tricked us with their clever advertising into killing ourselves and our neighbors. For me, the bar is the last line of defense. "It"s an employee safety and health issue," explained Lucky. The state is protecting her fry cook (I could see him in the kitchen, picking at an abscessed track mark) from the pernicious effects of secondhand smoke. Now, I can understand why they don"t want me smoking in restaurant dining rooms. If I"m enjoying a delicate pairing of seared foie gras and pear chutney, I probably don"t want somebody puffing away on a jasmine cigarette at the next table. I"m considerate. I can find a way not to smoke in the dining rooms of decent restaurants. Though bitterly resentful that I can no longer enjoy a cigarette with my f.u.c.king coffee in most places, I"ve learned to live with it. But the bar? The never having sat down at a bar for an early-afternoon shot and a beer with any such animal in their lives say so. For them, the bar is a place where we stupid, lumpen, and oppressed blue-collar proles are victimized by evil tobacco companies that have tricked us with their clever advertising into killing ourselves and our neighbors. For me, the bar is the last line of defense. "It"s an employee safety and health issue," explained Lucky. The state is protecting her fry cook (I could see him in the kitchen, picking at an abscessed track mark) from the pernicious effects of secondhand smoke. Now, I can understand why they don"t want me smoking in restaurant dining rooms. If I"m enjoying a delicate pairing of seared foie gras and pear chutney, I probably don"t want somebody puffing away on a jasmine cigarette at the next table. I"m considerate. I can find a way not to smoke in the dining rooms of decent restaurants. Though bitterly resentful that I can no longer enjoy a cigarette with my f.u.c.king coffee in most places, I"ve learned to live with it. But the bar? The bar bar! What these miserable screwheads are saying is that it"s OK to kill yourself with bourbon or tequila at nine o"clock in the morning just don"t enjoy yourself when doing it. It"s only a matter of time before some well-intentioned health n.a.z.i busts into your bedroom and yanks that postintercourse cigarette right outta your hand.
San Francisco is said to be one of the most "liberal" and "tolerant" places to live in America. That"s a good thing, right? I"m avidly supportive of "alternative lifestyles." I"m "tolerant". But something"s gone wrong here. It"s a wildly expensive city to live in even where I"m staying in the Tenderloin too expensive for most people to afford. Yet San Francisco"s acceptance of hopelessness, prost.i.tution, and drug addiction as "alternative lifestyles" seems to have ensured that many of its neighborhoods are choked with hustlers, junkies, the desperate, and the insane. I haven"t seen junkies in such great numbers since the bad old days of Alphabet City and in such bad shape. They"re everywhere dirty, diabetic, their limbs swollen, chalky, covered with suppurating tracks and infections. West Coast skells make my old crew from the methadone clinic look like the Osmond family. San Francisco"s main employment sectors, at a cursory glance, are the countless wh.o.r.ehouses, ma.s.sage parlors, clip joints, live s.e.x shows, and crummy-looking strip joints you see everywhere downtown. A great number of women in San Francisco seem to be s.e.x workers, and while perfectly OK as a "lifestyle choice" in my book, there are so many of them, and so disproportionately Asian, it feels more like Cambodia then any American city. As rents are so high, there"s nowhere to live and the dotcoms ain"t hiring like they used to.
With all their kind hearts and good intentions, San Franciscans, living in postcard-pretty houses atop high hills, seem to be sending a message: "It"s OK to come here. If you are prepared to lap dance for us . . . and then sleep on our sidewalks."
Just don"t smoke. That would be wrong.
I don"t want you to think I don"t like San Francisco. I do. It"s a relief from Los Angeles. And some of my favorite movies were filmed there: The Asphalt Jungle The Asphalt Jungle, Bullitt Bullitt, Dirty Harry Dirty Harry. When I was a kid, reading Life Life magazine on a beach in France, all I wanted to do with my life was run away to the Haight and live in a house with the Jefferson Airplane, drop acid and draw underground comix. I grew up on R. Crumb"s incredible line drawings of San Francisco, dreamed feverishly of all that free love I"d be enjoying with hippie chicks if I ever turned thirteen. When it became clear that living in a commune, or sharing a crash pad, meant arguing over whom the last yogurt belonged to, when I realized, finally, that I"d been right all along, that the Grateful Dead really did suck, regardless of what my brainy friends said, and that "the revolution" would never, ever, ever happen and that that was probably not a bad thing that particular dream died. The putative leaders of that revolution probably wouldn"t let me smoke now, either. And of course, by 1975, when I first saw the Ramones, all thoughts of ever living in a city other than New York evaporated. magazine on a beach in France, all I wanted to do with my life was run away to the Haight and live in a house with the Jefferson Airplane, drop acid and draw underground comix. I grew up on R. Crumb"s incredible line drawings of San Francisco, dreamed feverishly of all that free love I"d be enjoying with hippie chicks if I ever turned thirteen. When it became clear that living in a commune, or sharing a crash pad, meant arguing over whom the last yogurt belonged to, when I realized, finally, that I"d been right all along, that the Grateful Dead really did suck, regardless of what my brainy friends said, and that "the revolution" would never, ever, ever happen and that that was probably not a bad thing that particular dream died. The putative leaders of that revolution probably wouldn"t let me smoke now, either. And of course, by 1975, when I first saw the Ramones, all thoughts of ever living in a city other than New York evaporated.
My first few days in San Francisco were fine. I ate oysters and Dungeness crab at the Swan Oyster Depot exactly the kind of eating establishment I dearly love. I had durian ice cream at Polly Anne"s out by the beach. I had a superb meal at Gary Danko a too-precious dining room but very, very fine food, and a very likable group of hooligans in the kitchen. I visited a few New York transplants now working in the area, most lured by the town"s reputation for good food and innovative restaurants and its selection of readily available fresh ingredients. I had a gluey, cornstarchy, dinosaur Cantonese meal at Sam Wo"s in Chinatown, a throwback to my childhood forays to upper Broadway or Mott Street in New York. A cranky waitress hauled each course up a hand-pulled dumbwaiter. I purposefully ordered chop suey, wonton soup, and chow mein, not even having heard those words since 1963 and thoroughly enjoyed myself a little nostalgia for the old folks. I hung out with cooks a lot, as there are plenty of cooks in San Francisco. And one thing about cooks: Whether you"re talking about New York, Philadelphia, Glasgow, Melbourne, London, or San Francisco, we"re the same everywhere. (Though I don"t fully understand the Fernet Branca shot and ginger ale chaser thing.) I was staying in a rock and roll motel around the corner from the O"Farrell Theater. There was a bar/nightclub set off from the pool deck and music pounded all night long; bearded metalhead band members sat in deck chairs while their roadies brought them drinks. I whuffed down a few cigarettes and then wandered into the bar for a drink. "Are you Anthony Bourdain?" asked a security guy by the door. Knowing of no outstanding warrants or unsettled grudges on this side of the country, I said yes.
"Listen, man, my friend"s a chef, and he really loved your book. He"d love it if you dropped by his restaurant. It"s right down the street." I"d heard about the place. Let"s call it Restaurant X, a fairly sw.a.n.ky new joint a few blocks away. I"m always more comfortable in the company of chefs and cooks, so I figured, What